Geno Smith impresses Jets with film study

Posted by Mike Florio on August 15, 2014, 8:30 AM EDT

AP

Defensive coordinators who’ll face Jets quarterback Geno Smith have spent the last seven months studying film of his rookie season. So, in addition to studying his own film, Smith decided on his own to start studying film of the defensive coordinators he’ll be facing.

And the Jets are impressed by that.

Manish Mehta of the New York Daily News explains that Smith got the idea from advisor and friend John Thornton, whose advice was simple: “Watch the guys who are planning on attacking you.”

“That’s smart as hell though,” Ryan told Mehta. “I never even knew about it. . . . He wants to be great. He just doesn’t want to be a guy that gets through. God touched the kid. He’s got so much ability. He can throw, he can run, he can do all that. But it’s that work ethic. As a quarterback, you almost have to be a gym rat. And he’s done it.”

Smith saw it as no big deal.

“I like watching film anyway,” Smith said. “It was one of those things where I didn’t have anything to do anyway, so I just wanted to kind of get ahead of stuff.”

But doesn’t every starting quarterback study in the offseason both his own performances and the strategies and tactics of the teams he’ll be facing in the coming year? Maybe the implicit news here is that not many do.

Of course, a potential disconnect remains between studying film and performing at a high level when the reps are real. Especially when the starting quarterback’s understudy is a guy whose God-given abilities have made it easy for him at times to not give a damn about studying film.

“But doesn’t every starting quarterback study in the offseason both his own performances and the strategies and tactics of the teams he’ll be facing in the coming year? Maybe the implicit news here is that not many do.”

Nope. The implicit new here is that the Jets will hype anything they can to help Geno’s image.

This light finally turned on for Michael Vick under Tony Dungy’s mentoring as he returned to the NFL. If it’s true that Geno is realizing the importance of hard work and film study this early in his career, there’s hope for this kid to emerge.

I dont know if Smith will turn into a good QB, but he also had some of the worst offensive weapons in all of football last year. We saw Brady really struggle at times in New England and everyone blamed who was around him. With Smith, he was a rookie, with no weapons, playing for a defensive minded head coach. That he did anything positive and kept playing hard says a lot for him.

God touched the kid? Laying it on a bit thick, aren’t we, Rex? Besides, I recall his work ethic and understanding of playbooks being one of his strong points coming out of West Virginia, so this isn’t anything new. He has to get better on the field.

I think this says more about the Jets than it does Geno or the other teams. I am sure lots of other people do this. The fact that Ryan (seems to) think that this is something impressive might indicate that that organization in general has low standards. Or maybe its just more positive spin from a coach looking for reasons to be positive.

Also, this story is talking about him studying the defensive COORDINATORS. Is it possible there is a misunderstanding that he is studing the opposing defenses (like everyone does) when in reality he is somehow studying the coordinators themselves. I have no idea what film of the coordinator would tell you, I’m just grasping at straws maybe.

Most players and coaching staffs don’t spend much time if any watching film of their upcoming opponents in the offseason. I’ve heard plenty of coaches say that on NFL Radio, and according to Pat Kirwan it’s not really necessary. You’ve got plenty of time to do that week to week. Remember that coaches work ungodly hours during the season, and they don’t really need to spend that much time (relatively speaking) watching film to get the information they need to come up with a game plan, which takes up most of the weekly prep time. Additonally, teams aren’t going to be doing the exact same concepts and schemes from last year; there’s going to be tweaks that you can’t see until you’ve got game film from the current season. You think coaches want to waste their time looking at materials that might be outdated and then rely on notes from film watching in the Spring/Summer, during the regular season?